Poll: Voice Overs for RPG Main Characters

[Grottnikk]

Back in the olden days (get off my lawn!) we used to have to use our imaginations when it came to our main character's voice in our RPGs. Then Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale allowed us to at least yell at people when we were about to hack them to bits or incinerate them with an incantation. Now, we have fully voiced main characters like Sheppard and Hawk sharing space on our hard drives with mute (except for pained yelps) protagonists from Fallout 3 and Skyrim.

My question is this - how do you feel about the main character in an RPG having a voice? Do you like it if it's done well, or does it intrude on your vicarious ass kicking no matter how good a performance the actor turned in? Perhaps you prefer the steely "Young Ben" approach to human interaction.

I fall into the "If it's done well, then rock on" camp. Sheppard was well acted and I was pleasantly surprised to have a fully voiced protagonist in my game.

EDIT: They smurfed my poll ...

 

[Qvar]

I would rather have all games let you choose the style of voice you prefer, like Saints Row 3 (I guess one or more of the others do it too). Mainly because I have a baritone voice and sometimes it's hard to identify myself with the character.

If I can't choose, I would rather have a mute one, unless it's a character with his own defined traits and likable by himself. For instance, I like Amnesia's Daniel voice-acting. Also Isaac from Dead Space 2 comes to mind. I definitely wouldn't apreciate some empty husk like Mario being fully voiceacted. Nor do I specially like Sheppard.

 

[Raikas]

I like having a voiced protagonist when you have to watch your character in conversation, so I like having a voiced Shepard, a voiced Hawke, and found the unvoiced Warden a little distracting.

On the flip side, if I'm playing a purely 1st person game and don't see the character standing there (as in Fallout 3 or New Vegas) then I'm just as happy to have them stay silent.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Where is poll?! Nooooo....

I was fine with no voices, but since we started having voices, going back to no voices feels hopelessly archaic to me. Particularly galling is when everyone else BUT the protagonist has a voice, and you just stand there staring gormlessly at the NPC while you select a piece of silent text.

I hear the complaint about having a voice actor fly in the face of your concept of the character, but I've never gone into a game with a pre-defined concept of what my character is going to be like, and it takes about 10 seconds to take the voice actor's vocal cadences into account. Yeah, every once in a blue moon they'll deliver a line ENTIRELY wrong, but that's life. I'll still take the VA over no VA.

 

[Smooth Operator]

I think they are still at an awkward stage where writing needs to be cut down to accommodate the voices, they also tend to only give you two word snippets as choices which actually in no way represent what the dude is about to say and then they try to fix that awful with more awful and just colour code the damn choices so we are back at pre-school.
Also Bioware has this problem where they want to be super flamboyant so the voices snap from ultra friendly to demonic should you dare to mix things up...

Disconnects like that really do a lot more harm in building a character then having no voice at all, for me that is.

 

[Grottnikk]

I would rather have all games let you choose the style of voice you prefer, like Saints Row 3

Yeah that was a funny little tool to mess with, allowing a female voice that sounded like a bloody fog horn . THey have it in SR 4, too.

 

[Grottnikk]

Where is poll?! Nooooo....

I eated it

Seriously, though, it got lost when I made a typo in the captcha.

 

[duwenbasden]

Only if the PC completely and utterly follow my motives to the point, and have the voices I like. Otherwise, shut up and let the voice in my head speak.

Good PC voice: Saints Row boss.
Bad PC voice: Jason Brody.

 

[Zhukov]

Yes please!

I remember my experience of Dragon Age Origins and KOTOR being significantly diminished by the fact I was playing a walking fence post in a world of chatterboxes. I'd pick some cool line from the options provided and my character would just stand there, stiff faced and completely non-emotive. Then everyone else would react with their best-in-the-business voices as if I'd said something awesome.

If you're an indie game or something and you can't afford fancy pants voice overs then fair enough. Otherwise, I want my characters talking.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

I do like voice actors, it really helps build a character into the world and I think it helps flow with conversations better. but as long as I have SOME kind of input into the game (if it isn't voiced) then I'll be happy; I just hate being a mute floating camera.

 

[Flutterguy]

I much prefer they have a voice, even though I will only hear half the dialogue and skip to the next part when i finish reading.

While we are on the subject though..

 

[Caiphus]

Chalk up another vote for voices. I do appreciate the cost and work that needs to go into having voiceovers, especially since RPGs are dialogue-heavy affairs. But they tend to add vitality and personality to the characters. So yeah.

However, I've been playing Baldur's Gate: EE recently, and it's not so bad, but that could be because of the 2D character models, with the camera zoomed out miles away, even during dialogue. And there is still the occasional soundbite. As Zhukov mentioned, though, watching your fully rendered character stare gormlessly into the mid-distance in something like Dragon Age: Origins is rather awkward. So the way in which the conversations are presented is a factor.

 

[Quazimofo]

I would rather have all games let you choose the style of voice you prefer, like Saints Row 3

Yeah that was a funny little tool to mess with, allowing a female voice that sounded like a bloody fog horn . THey have it in SR 4, too.

Tool? What tool?
I only remember the 7 pre-sets (which were mostly fantastic by the way. The eastern-european female voice was the best female voice. Other 2 not so much)

 

[samgdawg]

I believe most games should follow one path or the other. I find it very disconcerting to have a character who at all other times is entirely silent unless emitting a pained grunt conversing with other characters and said characters reacting as though the PC relayed his opinion in an extravagantly eloquent manner. Bethesda games, early Bioware games (Jade Empire, Kotor, Kotor 2), and...Huh. Are those the only companies that develop games that feel like they should employ VA? I feel like I'm missing some. Anyway, either go all the way and have the PC totally mute, I don't really care how he communicates with other characters at that point, let's just have him nod his head yes or no for simplicity's sake, or make him (or her) fully voiced so we can hear what the PC is saying that leaves the NPC so breathless or awestruck.

One case of leaving the PC voiceless in FO3 always leaves me particularly vexed. Early on, at Megaton I think, you can perform a speech check to ask for more money for completing a task. If it fails it's no problem because the NPC just reacts how you'd expect from the relatively simple sentence the game provides, a bit annoyed and telling you to get to work. If it succeeds however, the NPC then proceeds to act as though the PC persuaded him through an eloquent and irrefutable argument. When the sentence provided by the game is, as mentioned previously, relatively simple and more akin to simply saying "Give me more money because I'm doing a big thing for you".

 

[infinity_turtles]

Assuming both are well implemented, I'd say realistically I prefer no voices for protagonists. The reason is just because a voiced protagonist makes limiting dialogue choices a necessity. You get fewer choices at fewer opportunities. It's not that voices are bad as much as a preference for what you can get from not having them.

 

[putowtin]

Dragon Age 2 did this right in my book
Same voice, but three options, evil dick, sainty goodie and sarcastic...

no guess for which I go for!

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

I have no preferences. When the character has a set voice and you I particularly like it, or it doesn't change with appearance (and it never does), it doesn't feel like my character. When I have to choose a voice, often the options are limited and misleading and I end up with a voice I don't like. This happens a lot in XCOM, for example. As for silent protagonists, in an RPG I'd rather have a voice, except all the options for having a voice are so shitty.

If someone did a smorgasboard of options really well, that would be my preference.

 

[RedEyesBlackGamer]

Guess I'm alone then. At least Atlus are still my homeboys. Mute PCs all day, everyday. I have never supported voices for blank slate characters. It makes them not be a blank slate.

 

[maidenm]

I think it depends entierly on what kind of RPG it is. Is it a character creation-heavy game like the Elder Scrolls games? No voice please.

Is it a main character-heavy story like Mass Effect and Dragon Age II? Voice please, if it's good. I love Jennifer Hale's voice in damned near everything she does, and femHawke is very good too.

It also depends on how conversations are made. In Dragon Age:Origins I would've hated a voiced character since there where several cases where my own imagination changed my character's tone, facial expression and attitude depending on how I saw them myself. They where my creations, and I loved that. In Mass Effect Shepard was defined enough as a character so I never felt I crated the character, just their story, and it worked well.

So if I had to cast my vote, I guess I'd vote "no voice" since that's what has left me with more creative imagination, unless there where a "Jennifer Hale 4evar" option I didn't know about...

Guess I'm alone then. At least Atlus are still my homeboys. Mute PCs all day, everyday. I have never supported voices for blank slate characters. It makes them not be a blank slate.

Aslo this. If we are meant to fill in the blanks, let us go all the way.